At least you did the damage to the boot in a nifty sounding place.

Not like at the supermarket on a concrete parking marker.

Mike

On 11/6/06 2:47 PM, "Mark Tuovinen" <mst@AK.NET> wrote:

> We had a similar but less severe occurrence with our `87 Westy Syncro.  We
> were cruising slowly along the waterfront campground in Seward, AK looking for
> a place to camp when severe wheel shake occurred.  I pulled over and inspected
> the front suspension, steering, etc, but saw nothing wrong.  On our next pass
> through the campground I heard a distinct metallic sound and then a loud bang.
> I got out and looked under the front to see our left outer Cv joint had
> grenaded.  As it was 5:30PM on a Saturday afternoon in a small town that does
> not carry Vanagon parts I ended up pulling the inner joint and shaft loose
> removing all but the outer joint housing, and dropping the drive shaft from
> the transmission to the front differential allowing us to finish our trip and
> deal with the repairs when we got home.  As we had our van out of storage for
> only a few weeks when this happened and it had been lubed and inspected two
> weeks before I suspect that we may have torn the CV boot on a rock
> the previous weekend when we drove the Denali Highway.  I am looking into
> finding a set of the outer boot protectors that European models came with in
> hopes of avoiding this issue in the future.
>
> Mark in AK
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Angus Gordon <birdworks@GMAIL.COM>
> Date: Monday, November 6, 2006 7:50 am
> Subject: Re: Scary Front shaking '90 syncro westie
> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
>
>> Rick,
>>
>> Several years back I encountered exactly the same symptoms and
>> eventuallytraced it to my right front outer CV joint. I would
>> strongly suspect a CV
>> joint in your case. The bad news is that it will act up more and more
>> frequently as it wears. The good news is that the vibration stops
>> when the
>> joint fails and you spread a trail of ball bearings all over the road!
>>
>> Angus
>>
>> '86 Syncro
>> '89 Carat
>>
>>
>>
>>> I'm driving my syncro westie straight down the interstate
>> cruising at
>>> 65 mph, suddenly the steering wheel begins to shimmy dramatically,
>>> violent enough that I'm looking for the shoulder fast.
>>
>
>